Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘For now.’

The techie took a new memory stick from his desk drawer, inserted it into his computer and transferred the file. Then he handed the memory stick to Alice and stroked his beard again. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

Alice shook her head, rewarded him with a smile for his usefulness, then left the basement and headed back up to her tiny office.

There were no trains passing outside her window at this hour, but there were several workmen on the tracks with hi-vis jackets and head torches. Alice paid them little attention as she inserted the memory card into her computer and opened up the audio files. There were about thirty, but the metadata told her that only five had been recorded since Poliakov’s disappearance, so she decided to focus on those. She moved the file icons to a separate part of her desktop, plugged in some headphones, took out a pencil and notepad and clicked on the first of the five.

The recording was obviously of a Call of Duty-type game and the first sound she heard was the loud drilling of a computer-generated automatic weapon, and the over-the-top screams of computer-generated death. She reduced the volume and listened to a good two minutes of gameplay before she heard any human dialogue. There were two boys, their unbroken voices teetering on the edge of adolescence. Their conversation was in Russian, of course, but that was no problem for Alice. At first, she heard little more than monosyllabic grunts or the occasional whoop of delight when an on-screen enemy was killed. But gradually the conversation became more varied, if no more interesting: comments about homework left undone, or female classmates unkissed. There was one dominant voice on the first recording, and that was clearly the informant’s son, the owner of the Xbox. She knew this, because the second voice constantly referred to him as Sergei. After seven or eight minutes, Sergei referred to his friend as Alexander. This was not Poliakov’s son, whose name was Ivan.

Alice killed the recording and opened the next file. To her surprise, Sergei was talking to a girl called Masha.

Recording three was more interesting.

The metadata on the file told Alice that it had been recorded three days ago, and she knew within seconds that Sergei’s gaming partner was named Ivan, because he shouted his name as a massive explosion from the game resonated in her ears.

— Ivan, you bastard!

Alice scribbled her translation of the Russian on her notepad. Her brow was furrowed with concentration, and she squinted slightly as she listened hard.

For several minutes there was nothing but gameplay. Then both boys shouted as there was another explosion. The gameplay fell silent.

— When are you coming back to school?

— I don’t know.

— Are you on holiday?

— Not exactly. Do you want another game?

— OK.

The violent noise of the gameplay started up again. The kids’ conversation reverted to grunts and the occasional expletive. When it was over, they said a curt goodbye. End of recording.

None of the remaining recordings featured the voice of Ivan Poliakov. Alice was disappointed. It was gone three in the morning now, and what she had thought would be a very substantial lead had turned out to be less fruitful than she’d hoped. She removed her headphones, rubbed her tired eyes and looked back at the notepad. The fragment of conversation between the two boys yielded nothing, other than proof that Ivan had been alive three days ago and was staying somewhere with an internet connection and an Xbox. She considered her next move. Maybe they could access the Microsoft servers, find out the IP address of Ivan’s console. Worth a try, but her gut told her it wouldn’t lead anywhere. These kids, especially the Russian ones, were smart enough to keep their devices behind a VPN. Maybe GCHQ could do something with the hard drive, but she wasn’t hopeful.

She put the headphones back on and started up the recording of the two boys again, scrubbing forwards to the fragment of conversation. She replayed it several times, not quite certain what she was listening out for. Whatever it was, she didn’t hear it. After listening to the fragment for the fourth time, she let the recording continue playing as she stared at the workmen on the railway track below. The Call of Duty explosions continued. In the distance, very faint yet just discernible despite the headphones, she heard the distinctive sound of Big Ben striking the hour.

She blinked and looked at her watch. It was 03.27. And she had never – never – heard Big Ben from her office.

She hadn’t heard it in real time. She’d heard it on the recording.

She scrubbed back. The chimes had happened just after a particularly long burst of computer-generated fire, and a howl of frustration from one of the boys. It was faint and distant, and the second half of the peals was drowned out by more game noise. But it was unmistakeable, and it meant Alice had a lead: three days ago, Ivan Poliakov had been in London. Had his father Dimitri been with him? Alice didn’t know, but she was determined to find out.

And to do that, she needed some more help from the techies.

Hamoud’s wife Rabia routinely returned home at 8 p.m. The final two hours of waiting for her were always the slowest. The kids were watching Nickelodeon. Hamoud would ordinarily pretend – to himself and to the children – that he was busy. Folding and refolding clothes left on the floor. Preparing food for a frugal meal that he knew Rabia would finish cooking when she got back, shooing him from the kitchen. Sometimes he would panic that she wasn’t coming back. That she had met someone else. That she had grown tired of his constant anxiety. He knew it was paranoia. And he knew paranoia was a symptom of everything he had experienced at Guantanamo. But sometimes those paranoid thoughts multiplied in his mind and he wasn’t able to control them. It was a disease.

Tonight, however, he sat at the table while Spongebob Squarepants played in the background. He constantly swiped his phone to refresh the page that indicated Rabia’s location with a little blue dot. She had left her final cleaning job three blocks away and was making her way home. Hamoud was impatient for her to walk through the door.

Impatient and nervous. He hadn’t told the kids about Walt Disney World. He hadn’t the heart to raise their hopes when he wasn’t certain that Rabia would agree to the trip. There were, now he thought about it, many reasons not to. They would lose several days’ income, for a start. There was no sick pay for domestic cleaners. His wife never missed a day’s work, no matter how unwell she was. And it would mean removing the children from school. She was very strict about that. She wanted her children to have the benefit of a proper education, and not end up like their parents. And perhaps the biggest obstacle was her pride. She didn’t want to rely on anybody’s charity. They were not victims. She often used those precise words, glossing over the inescapable truth that Hamoud was – or, at least once, had been – exactly that.

He put his phone down when he knew she was close and busied himself in the kitchen. A couple of minutes later, the door clicked open and Melissa ran to meet her mother. It was as if a champagne cork had been pulled from a bottle. She started babbling about her lessons, her friends and what had happened in the school yard. Malick quietly joined her and even offered a few quiet observations about his day. Rabia enveloped them in her arms, laughing at their jokes and commiserating with their tiny problems at just the right moments. Only when they had finished talking to her and drifted back to the TV did she approach Hamoud, smile warmly, place one hand on his cheek and say: ‘And how are you, my love?’